Rose by any other name

[porch]

When you add white to green, we still call it green, at least until we approach the level of dilution where it could arguably be called off-white. This isn't the case with red. Just a little bit of white and we call it pink; It becomes not-red. Maybe this applies to orange as well, but not as readily, that is, it takes more white before someone will say, "That's not orange, it's peach."

That's how it goes down in my culture, anyhow. I'm curious if anyone has insights regarding other cultures and languages and views on colours. In France, is rose considered not-rouge? Are there cultures where pink is considered red, but, for example, a tint of green is no longer considered green?

[Bikewer]

Having a bit of art training, I am of the opinion that if it's not on the standard color chart it's not a real color....

I don't know...There are lots of cultural associations with various colors, even in our supposedly enlightened society.
We also have the ability to label many fine gradations of color for whatever purpose, maybe because they just sound cool.
Think of all the terms they've come up with to describe beige or tan.....

[Professor Yaffle]

It is something I have always wondered about too. It is less about the naming of the words and more about categorisation. When we see scarlet or crimson, we categorise them easily with red. Same with lime as green. But we don't tend to categorise pinks in with reds for some reason. I know some very different cultures/languages have very different colour categorisations and naming to us. Maybe this peculiarity is specific to a certain language grouping.

I found out recently that the word pink (as a colour name) is a fairly recent addition to the language. It comes from the flower of the same name, which was so called because of its "pinked" edges to its petals.

I think I'll see if Language Log has an entry related to this.

ETA: This article doesn't quite answer the question, but it does mention that in Greek for example, there is a categorical distinction between light and dark blue, which we don't have in English. Very interesting article by the way, about how the categories actuall affect our perception.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1172

Googling colour categories in different languages seems to give some interesting links.

[Cavemonster]

Of the six primaries and secondaries in popular western culture
Red, + White = Pink
Red with more yellow in it + Black = Brown
Orange + Black = Brown
Orange + White = Peach
Yellow + Black = Brown or weirdly enough, a Green if it's a cool yellow, but we don't recognize a dark yellow.

Blue, Purple and Green can be lightened or darkened without losing their identity, but a warmer purple veering toward magenta can be classed as a pink when mixed with white.
There is a language for variations in these colors, but it is nowhere near as widely used as those variations above.

The odd thing is that these seem to break along color warmth lines, with edge cases being less clearly defined.

This actually makes a huge amount of sense, humans are self obsesessed and almost everything about us is a red, a pink, a brown, a peach, with very meaningful distinctions between them in terms of states of health. We are primarily warm colored, so it behooves us to have finer language tools to talk about ourselves.

It behooves us to draw a distinction between all the parts and states of health of our own bodies.

[ImaginalDisc]

When you add white to green, we still call it green, at least until we approach the level of dilution where it could arguably be called off-white. This isn't the case with red. Just a little bit of white and we call it pink; It becomes not-red. Maybe this applies to orange as well, but not as readily, that is, it takes more white before someone will say, "That's not orange, it's peach."

That's how it goes down in my culture, anyhow. I'm curious if anyone has insights regarding other cultures and languages and views on colours. In France, is rose considered not-rouge? Are there cultures where pink is considered red, but, for example, a tint of green is no longer considered green?

Yes, cultural definitions of colors can not only vary but there can be contexts that change what a color is called.

OK, here's an example. Midori. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ao_(color))

A green bicycle would likely be midori but a cucumber the exact same shade would be ao.

It can be even more complex. Here's a sample from the Wikipedia artcle on blue-green distinctions. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-green_across_cultures)

In Arabic the word for blue is generally أزرق azraq. The Arabic word for green is أخضر akhḍar. However, the color of the sky is sometimes referred to as "green" in Classical Arabic poetry, in which الخضراء al-khaḍrā’, the feminine form of akhḍar (because the Arabic word for sky, سماء samā’ is feminine), literally 'the green one', is an epithet for the sky. But الزرقاء al-zarqā’ (feminine form of azraq, literally 'the blue one') is used as an epithet for the sky as well.

It's funny you should mention orange (http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(word))because until the English encountered the fruit, the color didn't have a name. The first recorded use of "orange" as a color dates from 1512.

Wikipedia actually has a good article on the debate in psychology and lingustics about whether color distinctions are universal or relative to culture. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalism_and_relativism_of_color_terminology)

If I recall correctly some languages only have a few color words (black, white, and red) and there have been some researchers who propose that you can't get to fine distnctions like "chartrousse" until you've distinguished between blue and green, for example.

Anyway, if wikipedia doesn't keep you busy, remember that there all sorts of funny tricks your brain and eyes play in color perception, such as the fact that some people are able to see more of fewer colors than others (tetrochromates/color blindness) and that often your brain will change the colors you percieve based on the context of colors around you, such as making a white sheet of paper appear white even if you stand under the dense canopy of a jungle, where all the light from above is filterd through green leaves.

You might perceive a grey or beige spot surrounded by red as green, (http://http://books.google.com/books?id=vaNoSjdFh3cC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=grey+appears+as+green+when+surrounded+by+red&source=bl&ots=lDtORyJyXc&sig=oFOnTXye-eGCUzZ9qMBSeoLWiaw&hl=en&ei=9U2lSqXHFNWOtgf4zOgC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=grey%20appears%20as%20green%20when%20surrounded% 20by%20red&f=false) or you might fail to notice that the walls around are blue if you're watching TV, because the TV would be suffusing the room with blue which your brain tunes out.

[porch]

Of the six primaries and secondaries in popular western culture
Red, + White = Pink
Red with more yellow in it + Black = Brown
Orange + Black = Brown
Orange + White = Peach
Yellow + Black = Brown or weirdly enough, a Green if it's a cool yellow, but we don't recognize a dark yellow.

I've heard this before, that mixing black with other colours can react the same way as if you added blue, so that a yellow will turn greenish and a red will turn purpley. I don't know about that, but I do know that cheaper black paints aren't true black and, indeed, have a high blue content. I'm not sure if there is any effect beyond that that needs explaining.

Blue, Purple and Green can be lightened or darkened without losing their identity, but a warmer purple veering toward magenta can be classed as a pink when mixed with white.
There is a language for variations in these colors, but it is nowhere near as widely used as those variations above.

The odd thing is that these seem to break along color warmth lines, with edge cases being less clearly defined.

This actually makes a huge amount of sense, humans are self obsesessed and almost everything about us is a red, a pink, a brown, a peach, with very meaningful distinctions between them in terms of states of health. We are primarily warm colored, so it behooves us to have finer language tools to talk about ourselves.

It behooves us to draw a distinction between all the parts and states of health of our own bodies.

That seems to make sense. Never thought of that before.

[porch]

Imaginal Disc, thanks for the bounty of info. I'll have to get back to this later.

[Cavemonster]

I've heard this before, that mixing black with other colours can react the same way as if you added blue, so that a yellow will turn greenish and a red will turn purpley. I don't know about that, but I do know that cheaper black paints aren't true black and, indeed, have a high blue content. I'm not sure if there is any effect beyond that that needs explaining.


There definitely is an effect from the color bias of a black pigment, but I think it's actually a cultural issue as well.

Start with a cool yellow digitally and increase the amount of black, either by increasing the K in a CMYK mixer or the B in an HSB mix.

http://forums.randi.org/picture.php?albumid=266&pictureid=1567

[Marduk]

I'm curious if anyone has insights regarding other cultures and languages and views on colours. ?

In ancient Mesopotamia colour was used to indicate mood, the great red dragon Tiamat for instance wasn't red, she was angry

we still do the same thing, caught red handed, red faced etc
but they invented it and it often catches people out when taking ancient texts too literally
:D

[Madalch]

ETA: This article doesn't quite answer the question, but it does mention that in Greek for example, there is a categorical distinction between light and dark blue, which we don't have in English.

Ukrainian also has that distinction.

I once went through my Cree-English dictionary to find the colour words, and....forgot the results.

[Professor Yaffle]

Here's an interesting piece on the etymology of colour names in English:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/colour.htm

[porch]

There definitely is an effect from the color bias of a black pigment, but I think it's actually a cultural issue as well.

Start with a cool yellow digitally and increase the amount of black, either by increasing the K in a CMYK mixer or the B in an HSB mix.

http://forums.randi.org/picture.php?albumid=266&pictureid=1567
Thanks for putting that together. The one on the right definitely looks greenish to me. I wonder if it would look less green and more like dark yellow if it was surrounded by a range of different tints of yellow.

Orange + black = brown is a revelation to me. I had always constructed browns by adding the three primary colours together. Then I looked a bit more into brown and saw that it's not considered neutral!? I guess I developed my own system when trying to do naturalistic painting, and it all centered around every colour being a variation of brown. And I would almost never use black.

[Denver]

"For guys, until you're married, there are only 7 colors."

- from a married friend.

[Floyt]

I think it was drkitten who provided a whole lot of info on the comparative ethymology of color names some time ago, in a thread I am unable to find. Maybe he will chime in.

[ImaginalDisc]

Thanks for putting that together. The one on the right definitely looks greenish to me. I wonder if it would look less green and more like dark yellow if it was surrounded by a range of different tints of yellow.

Orange + black = brown is a revelation to me. I had always constructed browns by adding the three primary colours together. Then I looked a bit more into brown and saw that it's not considered neutral!? I guess I developed my own system when trying to do naturalistic painting, and it all centered around every colour being a variation of brown. And I would almost never use black.

Color from pigments is different than color from light, and color from RGB is different from CYMB. You can mix all the paints you have and probably won't get black but some kind of dull brown, for example. Whereas evenly mixed visible light is white, of course.